Category Archives: stewardship

Yahoo Attacks The Illinois State Fair – Well not really but my Yahoo account was attacked

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The reason this Post is so late in the day is because I opened my web browser today and it showed that I had 35 messages waiting for me. Someone had unleashed a worm on my address book and it was busy sending all my friends spam. Some of it dangerous spam. I was mortified. I spent over 2 hours checking to make sure it was originating on my computer. People sent some of it back to me so I could see what the heck was spewing out of my account. Then in consultation with my computer expert Afredo I determined that just changing my email password could halt the attack…So I did and it ended. I had to blow off lunch with David Lasley, Dave Fuchs and the Sangamon County Democrats just to get to here…Damnit.

There were some things that I saw at the Illinois State Fair that I did not really care for. One of those things was the prominence of Biofuel in both of  Governor Pat Quinn’s tents. We all know that biofuel, especially ones made from foods, distract people from getting rid of the internal combustion engine. It also drives up food prices so this:

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and this:

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were NOT appreciated.

Though the latest craze in biofuels is watermellons that are farm waste:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/26/watermelon-fuel.html

Watermelon Juice: The New Fuel?

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Fill 'er Up

Fill ‘er Up | Discovery News Video

Aug. 26, 2009 — A staple of backyard barbecues and summer time snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a new study, leftover watermelons from farms’ harvests could be converted into up to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million gallons) of clean, renewable ethanol fuel every year destined for your car, truck, or airplane’s gas tank.

Agriculturally, watermelon is a peculiar fruit — each year farmers across the country leave between 20 and 40 percent of their crop to rot on the ground. These are the ugly ducklings of the lot; though perfectly fine on the inside, the misshapen or blemished melons simply won’t sell at the grocery store.

“If a crow lands on a melon, takes two pecks at the rind, and then flies away, it’s no good,” Wayne Fish of the United States Department of Agriculture in Lane, Oklahoma said. “I had farmers telling me, ‘I’m leaving one-fifth of my melons on the land. Is there anything I can do with them?'”

Across the United States, he estimated that 360,000 tons of watermelons spoil in fields every year.

Some local growers wondered whether the waste melons could be turned into ethanol, the clean-burning fuel derived from plant sugars. In a series of new experiments published yesterday in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, Fish and a team of researchers showed that they can.

What’s more, watermelon juice may turn out to be the perfect way to optimize industrial-scale production of ethanol from corn, molasses and sugar cane.

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Then there was this. What the hell. This causes Earth Quakes in Texas yet it makes it to the State Fair?

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Fracking is Coming to Decatur. People better get ready for it:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526233,00.html

Drilling Eyed as Possible Culprit Behind Texas Earthquakes

Sunday, June 14, 2009

CLEBURNE, Texas  —  The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town’s 140-year history — but not the last.

There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.

The council’s solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone’s mind: Is natural gas drilling — which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas — causing the quakes?

“I think John Q. Public thinks there is a correlation with drilling,” Mayor Ted Reynolds said. “We haven’t had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes.”

At issue is a drilling practice called “fracking,” in which water is injected into the ground at high pressure to fracture the layers of shale and release natural gas trapped in the rock.

There is no consensus among scientists about whether the practice is contributing to the quakes. But such seismic activity was once rare in Texas and seems to be increasing lately, lending support to the theory that drilling is having a destabilizing effect.

On May 16, three small quakes shook Bedford, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth. Two small earthquakes hit nearby Grand Prairie and Irving on Oct. 31, and again on Nov. 1.

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The Russian Dam Explosion – What is it about the Russians and the Power Business

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I had intended to write about the Illinois State Fair today which is always a hoot. But this happened while I was on vacation and I just have to say something. Are the Russians stupid or criminal? I can’t make up my mind. First there was the greatest nuclear accident to date at Chernobyl which has its own Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

But now they give us the worst dam accident in modern times. Understand I am not talking about burst dams here. In the power business their are things that are dangerous like badly constructed coal fired plants and coal mines, then there are things that are considered safe like Hydro power. So the Russkies took a perfectly safe industry and killed (what?) 50 to 80 people off at one time. Was this a dam operated by by by Homer Simpson or something.

http://www.topix.com/world/2009/08/10-die-dozens-missing-in-russian-dam-explosion

Monday Aug 17

10 die, dozens missing in Russian dam explosion

An accident during repair work at Russia’s largest hydroelectric plant on Monday killed at least 10 workers, while as many as 65 others were missing after an engine room was suddenly flooded, officials said.

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But then they can’t even get the number of dead right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8207816.stm

Death toll rises in Russian dam explosion

Russian officials now say up to 76 people are feared to have died in the explosion at the country’s biggest hydro-electric power station on Monday.

64 people are still missing after the blast destroyed the power station’s main turbine hall.

The owners of the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant in Siberia say it is unlikely any survivors will be found.

Neil Bowdler reports.

READ MORE: Deadly Russia power plant blast

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What the hell man?

Why Rightwing Fundamentalism Is So Environmentally Destructive

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Why are Conservatives so stupid. Usually right away I get accused of name calling and class warfare. I usually respond that I am not questioning their intelligence so much as I am questioning their larger view of the world. I point out there is a class war going on and most of us are losing it. In much the same way that the VERY Rich slave holders perpetuated the fighting and hatred of the less wealthy poor whites and blacks, the world destroyers and the mega wealthy must have the lower classes fighting and bickering over “tree huggers” and Cap and Trade. This is what the fundamentalists miss. For lofty ideals that do not exist like “personal freedom” they are watching the only world that we have slip away for the enrichment of the very few.

Further more as I have said for 30 years it is not the “little guy” that is to blame for things like destabilizing the climate and acidifying the oceans. It is in this order, The militaries of the world, the Airline Industry, the Big Smoke Stack users (mainly megawatt coal fired electrical plants), and the Shipping industry. That is it. The little guy can ride his stinky garden tractor, fire up his stinky grill and drive his F150 to work everyday if he wants to. THINK about it for a moment. The aforementioned Earth wreckers want the burdened pushed off on the public. It means they get to keep on polluting because we STOP.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2007/11/14/the-10-biggest-carbon-dioxide-polluters.html

The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters

By Marianne Lavelle

Posted November 14, 2007

Ten large companies generate more than one third of the 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year by U.S. electric power

generators, according to figures in a first-of-its-kind database unveiled Wednesday.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and Southern Co. of Atlanta, which run the largest coal power plants in the country, top the list of U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, according to data compiled by the Center for Global Development, a global economic development think tank in Washington, D.C.

The database, called CARMA or Carbon Monitoring for Action, culls for the first time data both from government regulators around the world and commercial databases to provide an up-to-date look at the state of CO2 from power production—which accounts for one quarter of all carbon emissions. (The database doesn’t look at other large sources, like transportation and manufacturing.) Here are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the United States:

The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters

COMPANY TONS OF CO2 PER YEAR
1. American Electric Power 174 million
With 5 million customers in 11 states from Ohio to Texas, its biggest carbon emissions come from its Gavin coal plant in Cheshire, Ohio.
2. SOUTHERN 172 million
Has 4.3 million customers in the Southeast and owns the top three carbon-emitting power plants in the country: Scherer, in Juliet, Ga.; Miller in Quinton, Ala.; and Bowen in Cartersville, Ga.
3. (tie) AES CORP. 108 million
Has power plants from New York to California, with the worst emissions from its Petersburg, Ind., plant.
3. (tie) DUKE ENERGY 108 million
Serves 4 million customers in the Carolinas, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Its Gibson plant in Owensville, Ind., is the nation’s fourth-largest carbon emissions source in the power sector.
5. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY 101 million
The nation’s largest public power company serves the 8.7 million residents of the Tennessee Valley. Its Cumberland City, Tenn., plant ranks eighth in the nation in CO2 emissions.
6. NRG ENERGY 82.7 million
A wholesale power producer that operates in deregulated electricity markets throughout the country, its W.A. Parish plant in Thompsons, Texas, is the nation’s No. 5 carbon emissions source.
7. XCEL ENERGY 76.1 million
With 3.3 million customers in the West and Midwest, its largest carbon generator is its Sherburne County plant in Becker, Minn.
8. MIDAMERICAN ENERGY HOLDINGS 70.9 million
A Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway company, MidAmerican serves customers in Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota, with its largest CO2 emissions from the Jim Bridger plant in Point Of Rocks, Wyo.
9. PROGRESS ENERGY 68.1 million
Based in Raleigh, N.C., its plant in Roxoboro, N.C., is its biggest emissions source.
10. DOMINION RESOURCES 66.6 million
Dominion is based in Virginia, with operations stretching into the Northeast and Midwest. Its biggest carbon emissions source is its Mount Storm, W.Va., plant.

……

Strikingly, three Chinese power companies, South Africa’s giant Eskom, and India’s NTPC all generate more CO2 emissions than any single U.S. firm—underscoring the shared challenge posed by global climate change. The largest, Huaneng Power International of China, has emissions 68 percent higher than American Electric Power’s.

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I am quoting extensively from the article because it makes the point rather well. It is well researched and Lavelle is a good writer. In a startling 2 paragraphs she cuts through all the smoke and the fog to the heart of this story.

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One of the most striking findings in the data, says David Wheeler, a Center for Global Development senior fellow who led the research, is how concentrated the problem is among a relatively few large power generators. He said the top 100 companies worldwide produce 57 percent of CO2 emissions coming from the power sector. The top 30 companies produce 30 percent of the total. “On the one hand, it’s sobering,” he says. “But it might be hopeful. You could actually assemble the CEOs of those firms, and there might be many channels through which they can organize and address this as a group themselves. I think that’ll be critical to a solution.”

Wheeler was a former lead economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, where his team used public disclosure as a strategy to generate pressure from lenders and communities for pollution reduction in China, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Wheeler says his team similarly hopes the CARMA data will be used not only by environmental groups but by institutional and private investors and insurers, to encourage power companies to use less coal and oil and shift to renewable resources

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If you want to check the data here is the CARMA site:

http://carma.org/

About CARMA

Posted by Christopher Frazier on March 25, 2006

Frequently Asked Questions
CARMA’s Partners
All About Icons
Plant-Specific Information
Citation Policy
CARMA Version Tracker

At its core, Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the United States and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.

CARMA is produced and financed by the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development, an independent and non-partisan think tank located in Washington, DC.

The objective of CARMA.org is to equip individuals with the information they need to forge a cleaner, low-carbon future. By providing complete information for both clean and dirty power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions of consumers, investors, shareholders, managers, workers, activists, and policymakers. CARMA builds on experience with public information disclosure techniques that have proven successful in reducing traditional pollutants.

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Yet yet at least one of the social values issues also comes into play and that is abortion. Now I could go on and on about a woman’s right to control her body and how god does not play an active role in the world so birth is not a “miracle”. But the fact is that the main hatred of abortion by the various world’s religions is based on their desire for world domination. The idea being that once the world is “totally” christian for instance then NIRVANA will arrive. But what this ignores is the Over Population that this has caused. The world population stands at 9 billion people. The Earth has a carrying capacity of about a billion people soooooo at some point there is going to be a huge die off. Probably when my niece Taylor is in her 30s or 40s. I just want to say to my mother and others like her…don’t you realize that you are killing Taylor off?

http://www.overpopulation.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/popaware/article.pl?display_subsection%%%NewsDigest_NewsItem%%1

If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature,
brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world.”
Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall 023934

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Why Making Drugs Illegal Is Stupid – Oh I still have to do my mom and burning things as stupid too

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That was a very public “note to self”, but after being on vacation I had to go back and look at my list of STUPID things before I realized that I wasn’t nearly done yet. I may revise this post some (which I hardly ever do) because I have a lot happening this week, the State Fair, A movie and planning the Poker Scoot just to name a few.

I am in general opposed to limiting anyone’s access to naturally occurring  substances. If it grows in nature and you want to try it fine. So that means that marijuana, mushrooms, cactus, poppies and bread mold (LSD) that you make or grow or find in the wild is OK to use. If however you poison yourself well that sucks and you die. Anybody who tells you any different is a Doctor who wants to control its use so he can make money on it, or a pharmaceutical company who wants to make money off it, or a religious nut or a social worker who wants to control your social life or finally a fascist (small f) who wants to control everything. I believe that there should be market places for the stuff and it should be taxed. I know the capitalists have a heart attack because  “their” workers could be high. To bad so sad big wah wah.

I am also in favor of the liberalizing of the “made drugs” category as well. Altering your reality is your own choice and when government intervenes it simply creates a black market, swells jail populations and serves no useful purpose. If the money that was spent on criminalization was spent on education and prevention we wouldn’t have the problems we have now. In fact a certain percentage of any human population is going to be addictive and useless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade

History

 

 

1921 photograph of Chinese Maritime Officers with 300 lb (140 kg) of smuggled morphine shipped in cylinders of sodium sulfate from Japan.

See also: Opium Wars

The trade of drugs has existed for as long as the drugs themselves have existed. However, the trade of drugs was fully legal until the introduction of drug prohibition. The history of the illegal drug trade is thus closely tied to the history of drug prohibition.

In the First Opium War, the United Kingdom forced China to allow British merchants to trade in opium with the general population of China. Although illegal by imperial decree, smoking opium had become common in the 1800s due to increasing importation via British merchants. Trading in opium was (as it is today in the heroin trade) extremely lucrative. As a result of the trade an estimated two million Chinese people became addicted to the drug. The British Crown (via the treaties of Nanking and Tianjin) took vast sums of money from the Chinese government in what they referred to as ‘reparations’ for the wars.

In the United States, a 1791 tax led to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

[edit] Foreign intervention

Some governments that criminalize drug trade have a policy of interfering heavily with foreign states. In 1989, the United States intervened in Panama with the goal of disrupting the drug trade coming from Panama. The Indian government has several covert operations in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent to keep a track of various drug dealers. Opium production in Afghanistan is a current impediment in the development of a licit economy for that country.

[edit] Violent resolutions

In the late 1990s in the United States, the FBI estimates that 5% of murders were drug-related.[1] In addition, drug smuggling can lead to harsh penalties, including the death penalty, in certain countries (for example, Singapore).

Many have argued that the arbitrariness of drug prohibition laws from the medical point of view, especially the theory of harm reduction, worsens the problems around these substances.[citation needed]

[edit] Minors and the illegal drug trade

The U.S. government’s most recent 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12–17 sold illegal drugs during the twelve months preceding the survey; such adolescents also admitted to know or be linked to other drug dealers across the nation.[2][not in citation given] The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.7% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).[3]

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting[4] and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally-funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana “easy to obtain.” That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.[5]

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Course then you might ban physically enhancing drugs in sports or something crazy like that…Then people might be tested for drugs at  work…oh we already do that.

http://www.ask.com/questions-about/Illegal-Drugs

Answers to Common Questions

Why are some drugs illegal?

 In Khazakstan the only illegal drugs are Cocaine Heroin Snail Slime and Fat mans armpits It is a known fact from our government scienctist Dr Yamack that if you lick a Fat mans armpit you will die from constipation’s.Not Nice!

 

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2009022506…   See entire page »

What are illegal drugs?

Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroine, Acid, Prescriptions that are not prescribed to YOU. There are MANY types of illegal drugs, but the first 5 i listed are probably the most popular. Prescription drugs have become increasingly popular over the las…

 

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2009060216…   See entire page »

Why do people use illegal drugs?

 because the legal ones just arent as good desire is greater than fear!

 

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_people_do_drugs_if_it…   See entire page »

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Energy Tough Love Is On Vacation In Indianapolis and then Chicago

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So there will be posts only when I have the time. Today’s post concerns the rumor (and that is all it is) that is being spread by the coal and oil companies that Wind Turbines are not green and are not healthy. It finally has made it to Indiana:

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090809/BUSINESS/908090380/1305/ARCHIVE/Blowback++Indiana+s+emerging+wind+farms+whip+up+controversy

Blowback: Indiana’s emerging wind farms whip up controversy

More and more critics say windmills aren’t that green, aren’t a great source of energy — and can be harmful to people’s health

By Jeff Swiatek

Posted: August 9, 2009

The 200- to 300-foot-long blades on industrial windmills look almost whimsical from afar. They appear to turn slowly. People sometimes stop to take pictures. “They look cool,” said Eric Burch, director of policy and outreach for the Indiana Office of Energy Development.

The tips of those giant blades, however, move at speeds approaching 160 mph, creating forces that send low-frequency vibrations through the ground. People three-quarters of a mile away sometimes say they can feel the vibrations in their chests.

Cases of nausea, headaches, insomnia and other ills have become common enough in states with wind farms that they’ve been given a name: “wind turbine syndrome.”

That newfangled illness is just one of a growing list of health effects, inconveniences, risks and cost considerations that have resulted in a backlash against wind farms in other states, even as Indiana is in the midst of a rapid buildout of wind energy.

What’s happening in other states suggests that the warm and fuzzy feeling many Hoosiers have for wind farms could change as the big turbines creep closer to more populated areas near Indianapolis, Lafayette and other cities.

Benton County farmer John Gilbert said several farmland owners he knows refused to lease space for turbines. He can’t quite understand that. He and his family leased ground for four turbines being built by French-owned enXco.

“My thoughts are, they are going to have to look at ’em, so they might as well get paid.”

Wind turbine energy is here. But groups have sprung up nationwide to fight it.

Jon Boone, a retired University of Maryland administrator who helped found the North American Bluebird Society, has become a leading wind-energy critic from his rural Maryland home, where he helped fight a wind farm proposal several years ago. Now he duels with the windmill lobby through his Web site, stopillwind.org.:}

More later..

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Why Buying Locally Could Save The Planet – Stupid uses of transportation

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Why buying your food locally is so important in so many ways. One of corporate capitalism’s goals is for people to lose their common sense. Some forms of food have been moved all over the planet for 20,000 years. Certain forms of food lend themselves to this process nicely. The commodity grains for example have been move by draft animals, boats and now trucks since their mass cultivation began. Even this can be moderated a bit. But to be shipping all manner of food all manner of places in all types of weather is just dumb.

I boil this down to a single sentence. Do I need to eat apples in Illinois in the winter? If I do should it come from Ecuador? (this is true) I have an apple tree in the back yard. Shouldn’t I just freeze some? But then irrational uses of our transportation system is a hallmark of the modern world. But there is more to consider. Local foods encourage carbon sequestration in the plants themselves, their reintroduction into the soil by composting, and the enhancement of your personal health. These are a few things to consider when you buy only food grown within a hundred miles of your house.

Then there is the ethics of factory farming of any living thing. Anyway planting a garden and harvesting local free stuff only makes sense.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html

The Food Chain

Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World

Massimo Sciacca for The New York Times

Kiwis grown in Italy are examined — and damaged fruit is discarded— before being shipped.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: April 26, 2008

Correction Appended

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

Food has moved around the world since Europeans brought tea from China, but never at the speed or in the amounts it has over the last few years. Consumers in not only the richest nations but, increasingly, the developing world expect food whenever they crave it, with no concession to season or geography.

Increasingly efficient global transport networks make it practical to bring food before it spoils from distant places where labor costs are lower. And the penetration of mega-markets in nations from China to Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe — like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco — has accelerated the trend.

But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.

Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112801611.html

Want to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint? Think Food.

Transportation choices such as car vs. subway have a big effect on carbon footprint, but experts say food choices have nearly as much impact.

Transportation choices such as car vs. subway have a big effect on carbon footprint, but experts say food choices have nearly as much impact. (By Ramin Talaie — Bloomberg News)

By Katherine Salant

Saturday, November 29, 2008; Page F04

In moving for a year to New York City from Ann Arbor, Mich., a small Midwestern college town, the biggest change for me has not been the shift from a house to a high-rise and a living space that is only one-third as big.

It is the absence of a car.

The difference was apparent the first day. As in previous moves, settling in included many trips to the hardware store for this and that. But this time it was not a simple matter of getting directions and driving there. It was confronting a subway system with 26 different lines. And, after reaching Home Depot and making my purchases, I had to figure out how to get them home. (I learned that most stores in Manhattan offer delivery services for a fee.)

Even the most mundane details of daily life, including meal planning, have changed. In Michigan I had the luxury of “last-minute cuisine,” routinely making a dinner plan at 6 p.m., heading for the grocery store that is a three-minute drive from my house, grabbing a few things and returning home, all inside of 20 minutes. Here the grocery store is a 15-minute walk from our apartment building. The return trip is longer because I am lugging my purchases in a wire shopping cart. With each grocery outing taking at least 40 minutes, I plan ahead and shop for groceries only once or twice a week.

Traveling by subway has not proven to be a timesaver, but the time is allocated differently. On a 60-minute car trip you can while away the time by listening to the radio or music. On a subway you can read. The rush hour is still stressful, but the defensive maneuvers are different. Sandwiched into a subway car, you have to be watchful of backpack-wearing riders who never seem to realize how often their backpacks whack other passengers.

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If you want to calculate how much you save by buying locally:

http://www.foodcarbon.co.uk/

Home The food we consume contributes to climate change. The production, packaging and transportation of food all consumes energy and results in carbon emissions which threaten to raise average global surface temperatures.

However, not all foods are equal…

The Food Carbon Footprint Calculator (FCFC) provides the opportunity to calculate the resultant carbon dioxide from the food you eat, called your “Food Carbon Footprint”.

This website also offers personalised and practical ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet, reducing your impact on climate change.

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Kathleen Parker Saying Stupid Things About Energy – So far this year I have had to write posts about

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George Will and Walter Wolfman Williams because they weighed in on energy issues. George Will is a nonfiction baseball writer and Wolfman claims to be an economist, so neither one by definition knows anything about energy consumption except that they do a lot of it. But when Kathleen Parker weighs in on Cap and Trade the whole world must be …what waiting with baited breathe? I mean:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0720parkerjul20,0,3212727.column

Kathleen Parker

Bio

Kathleen Parker assesses the country’s mental health with a reporter’s gimlet eye combined with a sense of humor.

“My ambitious goal,” she says, “is to try to inject a little sanity into a world gone barking mad.”

She came to column-writing the old-fashioned way, working her way up journalism’s ladder from smaller papers to larger ones.

“I never set out to become a commentator – and do continue to resist the label ‘pundit’ – but I found that keeping my opinion out of my writing was impossible,” says Parker. “One can only stand watching from the sidelines for so long without finally having to say, ‘Um, excuse me, but you people are nuts.'”

Her writings in support of American troops, first-responders and other front-line participants in the war on terror were among the reasons The Week magazine named her as one of the country’s top five columnists in 2004 and 2005.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/kathleen-parker.html

Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker

» Columnist | Parker started her column in 1987 when she was a staff writer for The Orlando Sentinel. Her column was nationally syndicated in 1995 and she joined The Washington Post Writers Group in 2006. Along the way, she has contributed articles to The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan and Fortune Small Business, and she serves on USA Today’s Board of Contributors and writes for that newspaper’s op-ed page. She is a regular guest on “The Chris Matthews Show” on NBC. Her book “Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care” was published in 2008 by Random House.

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http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x1911310943/Kathleen-Parker-A-crude-reality-about-clean-energy-security

Kathleen Parker: A crude reality about clean energy, security

Washington Post Writers Group

Posted Aug 02, 2009 @ 11:31 PM

WASHINGTON — What’s in a name? A bit of deception when it comes to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.A more accurate title might be: the American Clean Energy and Less Security Act.To get to the bottom of what’s wrong with the 1,400-page energy bill passed by the House of Representatives, you have to dig deeper than Canada’s tar sands. And what you find there is just as sludgy — and taxing to process.Crudely refined: The greener we are, the less secure we’re likely to be.

Meaning, we either can be green or we can be less dependent on oil from terrorist-sponsoring states. But under the current energy bill, we can’t be both.

Put another way: The more we cap our carbon, the happier the Saudis are. That’s because most Middle Eastern crude is more easily accessible and requires less processing than what we and our friendlier neighbors can produce.

If you don’t know this, it’s because beer summits are more fun than math. Herewith, a short course for word people.

Basically, the energy bill focuses primarily on stationary sources of CO2 emissions (power and manufacturing plants) and would do little to address mobile sources of emissions, i.e. transportation.

Since virtually all U.S. stationary sources use domestic energy — coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass, etc. — the energy bill would do almost nothing about reducing oil or gasoline imports. Foreign sources provide about 70 percent of the oil used in refining gasoline and diesel.

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I am not going to report anymore of this drivel than the allowed several paragraphs. If you want your intelligence insulted you can go read the rest of it.  First because she has heard it over and over from the military she believes that WHERE we get our energy from has anything to do with our national security. Because OPEC kicked our economic asses after the oil embargo in 1973-76 the myth has been propagated that our energy sources “hold us hostage”. Well if we had a diverse enough portfolio then that would never be true AND if we had moved away from the carbon economy back then we would not even be having this discussion.

There in lies (pun intended)  her second stupidity that is she fails to mention ANY alternative to Saudi Oil or the carbon economy. She does not take into account that OPEC oil only amounts to about 20% of our total imports. Canada, Venezuela and Nigeria along with Mexico  are our biggest oil partners. Nor does she take into account the alternatives to carbon (batteries) are well underway especially in the transportation sector where gasoline consumption will continue its decline for the foreseeable future until we use NONE at all.

But the biggest hugest irony is that “Cap and Trade” is a time tested Industry suggested method of modifying our emissions. It was used most notably in the 70s to get rid of or mute acid rain. It worked very well and only modestly contributed to the rise in electrical costs. The same can be expected in the carbon market. The fact is that we need to quit burning coal all together or we will burn ourselves out of house and home. She doesn’t even remotely address the issue of our using the atmosphere as an open sewer. Dumb da Dumb dumb…just the facts mam.

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Barack Obama And Stupid – The situation just got out of hand

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The public DEMANDS that the police investigate just about everything. The police DEMAND respect. College Professors always DEMAND respect. There was an awful lot of DEMANDING going on in the situation. The thing is I can sympathize with everyone involved. See before there was driving while BLACK, there was driving while HIPPIE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPd4FmlpVxI

Anytime the police saw long hair, they presumed that there was drugs involved. My girlfriend had a nickname for me. She called me PC and it did not stand for politically correct. It stood for Probable Cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGhcECnWRGM

At that time I had a brother who rode around with me a lot. He did not like the police – he called them PIGS. So when I got pulled over and he was along he would start making PIG noises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8LBnOJNxk

So I wanted to “kill” them both because the situation was so stupid. I believe that is what Obama meant but did not say, that the situation was STUPID not the people involved because see when you call people stupid they go getting all there back up and stuff. So in that spirit the next several posts will look at things in the environment and energy world that I think are stupid. A list follows:

The phrase Global Warming

Burning things

Cars

Windows

Apples in Illinois in the Winter

Illegal drugs

My mother

Eating meat

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Since I owe Dan Piraro for letting me post his cartoons and I share his concerns, Let us start with the last one first. If we are going to admit that Burning Things is Stupid (more on that later) then we have to admit that there are only several sources of legitimate power. These are geothermal, tidal, wind and solar. Just to keep things simple while this is a lot of power it is still finite. ALL food is solar power. No Sun no food. So when we become rational and we may be in the process of doing that, would we eat meat? The answer is probably not. Here is Dan and the Washington Post’s take on it:

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Prius vs. Prime Rib

If you are a person concerned with what you can do to help mitigate climate change, read this short article from the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072800390.html:}

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The Washington Post opines:

Gut Check

The Meat of the Problem

By Ezra Klein

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there’s one activity that’s not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

If it’s any consolation, I didn’t like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It’s not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it’s that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat’s contribution to climate change is intuitive. It’s more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. “Manure lagoons,” for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas — interestingly, it’s mainly burps, not farts — is a real player.

But the result isn’t funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. “How convenient for him,” was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. “He’s a vegetarian.”

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Did you get the half hearted humor – gut check?

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Farming In The Sky – Or turning our skyscrappers into farms

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SkyScrapers are energy dogs from a lot of perspectives most notably the energy needed to hoist people into the sky…so this concept probably won’t work. But from a local food perspective and from a built environment perspective It has some attraction.

On a personal note, I normally have little conscience about posting stuff here from other sources but this is from a blog, the person clearly put a lot of work into it and the pictures are really beautiful. So I am going to post a little of it here…for the rest goto:

http://www.land-force.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/17/vertical-farms/

20 Vertical Farming Pics, Designs & Concepts

One couldn’t say that the concept of vertical farming isn’t controversial, but they could say that it has serious merits that need to be considered on both sides of the issues.

 

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What is a vertical farm?  The basic premise, as you see in this image, is to be able to grow food in urban areas by creating tall buildings where, instead of each floor having offices, each floor is in essence its own super greenhouse, where different crops can be grown to feed people within its own community.  The idea is to not only be able to feed the community, but to protect the land that’s being damaged by over-farming and making sure that there will still be enough food for an ever growing population.

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Of course, not all designs would be the same, but this model of a design for the city of Seattle helps us to see how it would work.  It’s integrated into a city plan so that it fits in, and has areas where people can go inside to not only tend to the plants, but could actually buy their produce at the same time.

 

 

 

 


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Thinking of vertical farm in terms of super stores fits a model like this one, where the ground floor has everything a traditional supermarket would have,

 

 

 

 


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While upper levels would contain areas for growing produce.  This particular example tries to highlight how power might be created for all the energy needed to grow crops in urban areas, as the designs for vertical farming wouldn’t be able to provide natural light for all of the crops, so they’d need enhancement from artificial lighting.  It’s one of the major criticisms of trying to have vertical farms.

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Rail Splitter Wind Farm Has Central Illinois All A Twitter – Covering local green news is kinda cool

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100 megs. about to come on line.

http://www.pjstar.com/homepage/x1885905423/Rail-Splitter-Wind-Farm-almost-operational

072209windfarm8.jpg

Purchase this photo

LESLIE RENKEN/JOURNAL STAR

Rail Splitter Wind Farm turbines stand on land near Emden.

More related photos

072209windfarm1.jpg

By MATT BUEDEL (mbuedel@pjstar.com)

Journal Star

Posted Jul 21, 2009 @ 01:35 PM

Last update Jul 21, 2009 @ 11:57 PM

DELAVAN —

Dave and Judy Diekhoff wanted a host of questions answered before they committed to having a colossal wind turbine installed on a small plot of their 200-acre farm near Delavan.

They wanted to know about potential effects on property value, noise and the longevity of such structures. Most importantly, they wondered about the feasibility of aerial crop dusting for their property and that of their neighbors.

“After we got those worked out, we were fine with having the turbine on the farm,” Dave Diekhoff said Tuesday. “We believe in wind energy. . . . It’s going to be good for the county, and it’s going to be good for the schools.”

The massive structure that sits on their property today is part of the sprawling Rail Splitter Wind Farm that encompasses parts of Tazewell and Logan counties and straddles Interstate 155 near Delavan.

Some of the 67 turbines installed earlier this year as part of the project already are pumping electricity into the grid, and the rest of the structures should be operational next month, according to Bill Whitlock, director of development for Horizon Wind Energy.

Once those turbines begin churning – producing 100.5 megawatts of electricity per year, enough to power 30,000 homes – the state will mark a green milestone.

With Rail Splitter, Illinois will produce more than 1,000 megawatts of wind energy annually, pushing it further into the top 10 of wind-energy producing states.

Illinois currently ranks 10th in the nation with 915 megawatts of wind energy production per year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Rail Splitter and two other projects are under construction or just completed.

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http://www.journalstandard.com/state_news/x135762987/Rail-Splitter-wind-farm-to-produce-wind-power-in-August

Rail Splitter wind farm to produce wind power in August

By Chris Dettro

GateHouse News Service

Tue Jul 21, 2009, 01:01 PM CDT

LINCOLN, Ill. –

The steel wind towers and turbine propellers of the Rail Splitter Wind Farm northwest of Lincoln should start spinning and producing electricity for the power grid sometime in August, project developers say.

“We’re commissioning the turbines beginning (Monday, July 20),” said Bill Whitlock, development director for Horizon Wind Energy LLC.

“At some point in August, it will be commercially operational,” Whitlock said of the project.

The farm consists of 67 General Electric 1.5-megawatt turbines with the capacity for 100.5 megawatts — enough to power more than 30,000 average Illinois homes each year.

Each turbine is more than 262 feet high and includes three blades that are each 125 feet long and a nacelle — which contains the gearbox and generator — the size of a camper trailer.

Houston-based Horizon operates more than 15 wind farms across the country, including the Twin Groves I and II wind farms in eastern McLean County. Those farms, which became operational in March 2007 and early 2008, respectively, have a combined 240 turbines and a generating capacity of 396 MW.

Horizon also is developing the Top Crop I wind farm, which is of similar size to Rail Splitter, in LaSalle County. That farm is the first phase of a larger project that will include wind farms in Grundy and Livingston counties.

Illinois ranks 10th in the country for existing wind energy capacity and 16th in potential capacity. There are 17 wind projects operating in the state so far, accounting for more than 1,100 MW of capacity.

Illinois gets about 2 percent of its electricity from wind.

Construction began on Rail Splitter Wind Farm, on Interstate 155 in Logan and Tazewell counties about 60 miles from Springfield, in July 2008, Whitlock said. Completing a trench for underground wiring was one of the final construction elements.

Horizon officials say the annual environmental benefits of Rail Splitter will be equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road.
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http://nilasmith.blogspot.com/2009/05/railsplitter-wind-farm.html

Railsplitter Wind Farm



I am in awe of these wind turbines!

No, I’m not the one who took these pictures, but my publisher Jan did, and they were in yesterday’s LDN.

LDN does not copyright their photos, so they are free for the taking for anyone who wants to copy them.

If you could like to see larger versions, follow this link; http://www.lincolndailynews.com/Features/picturepage051309_rwf.htm then click on the phot for a larger version.

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http://midwestgreen.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/railsplitter-windfarm-dedication/
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